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Friday, 10 January 2014

What is the future like for these wonderful British native ponies that are classed as a rare breed? Hopefully, they have a positive future, along with all other British native breeds of ponies and other animals. We need people to realise how wonderful these little ponies are.

Exmoor pony in sepia

They make lovely children's ponies, but can also be ridden by small adults as they are very strong. They are very hardy and can live out all year round, so they are easy to care for. They are very intelligent and fun to ride. Exmoor ponies are also very adaptable to most disciplines, ridden and non ridden.

One thing these ponies are excelling at is horse agility, which is a very fun thing to do with your pony. Last year Bear - a most gorgeous Exmoor stallion won the horse agility world championship. Take a look at this amazing video of him at play, with his owner Dawn Westcott.

Thankfully people are realising their worth for another job, which hopefully will help secure their future too. They are being used for conservation grazing. What is conservation grazing? Whole herds of varying numbers are used for managing interesting landscapes in a low intensive way to encourage the wildlife and plants that these areas support. Sites need grazing to remove the scrub and rough grasses. More info here from the Moorland Mousie trust that have ponies available for this job.Conservation grazing

There are quite a few sites around Britain that are using Exmoors for this as they are an excellent choice for the job. Read about one of the sites in the South Downs where they are using Exmoor ponies for conservation grazing.